Africa’s Largest Windfarm Set to Connect Remote Kenya to the Grid

(The Guardian) Lake Turkana’s fierce winds have plagued villagers for generations, now they have inspired plans for Kenya’s most ambitious infrastructure project in 50 years – a 310MW windfarm, that they said was an impossible dream.

But Dolleman’s trips were always ruined by the difficulty of finding somewhere to stay in a vastly underdeveloped area where tour lodges are located hundreds of miles apart.

Every time he pitched his camp in the evening, a violent gust of wind would uproot the tent sending it into the vanishing horizon. He ended up spending numerous nights in his car.

“Willem constantly told us that someone had to do something to harness the incredible wind power he encountered in the area,” said Carlo van Wageningen, a business partner to Dolleman who is now taking part in a consortium that is constructing Africa’s largest windfarm.

“The problem was that the conditions were not right because at the time in the 1980s and 90s diesel was relatively cheap and it made economic sense for Kenya to source its power from thermal sources.”

Things changed in 2004 when the price of oil climbed and many countries with steep fuel import bills, such as Kenya, began to look seriously at alternative energy sources to provide their power needs.